diorama style modeling

hi all,
ive been playing with a new visual style, inspired by Kay Lousberg's KayKit, a popular free asset library, as well as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (2019) and the Animal Crossing series.

the style consists of low-poly, cartoony meshes designed for an overhead camera, as if the scene was a diorama of baked clay models.

meshes & texturing

compared to modeling ive done prior, the biggest difference is how detailed the meshes are. my previous models would leave important details like eyes as flat planes with the details textured on. contrastly, these new models have nearly every detail meshed- eyes bulge a small distance out of the head, the crease between bricks is carved into the wall.

inversely, textures have become much simpler, to the point that im able to use the same texture for every model. the texture is a grid of 32 gradients that can be assigned like a palette to different parts of the mesh. the gradient is aligned to match the direction of shading, so the model simulates lighting in any environment.

all of this gives the mesh the appearance of baked clay.

texture effects

one feature of the models in Link's Awakening that sets it above my own models is normals. normal maps alter the way textures interact with light, creating the illusion of bumps or other surface deformations. this is why the grass looks bumpy and the stone looks rough. normals add a lot of tactility.

another feature is specularity. my models are all matte, which is appropriate for clay, but using some specularity to draw things that should be shiny (wood, dewey grass, metal) adds tactility and variety.

all that said, i think these effects work best when underused. they have the potential to make the visuals plastic-y.

discovering this style has gotten me excited to do more modeling; i feel like im making a lot of progress. to sign this off, i'll append the first character model i ever modeled and rigged.

thank you for reading
- ciaran

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